Loving a Partner Through an Addiction

“One cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”- Andre Gide

Life is stressful, and when you get married you may not know your partner’s history of family addictions. One of the problems that strike many marriages is when a partner becomes addicted. It doesn’t really matter what the addiction is, because what it does to the addicted person is pretty much the same destructive pattern. It takes over the person’s thinking, and the addiction itself begins calling the shots. Prior to an addiction your spouse tries to please you, and take care of their family. After an addiction gets a hold of your spouse they change and begin trying to appease the need for their drug or vice of choice. They will lie, cheat and steal to get their fix, and you have to know that up front if you are going to love them through their addiction. You also have to know up front that every instinct inside you is going to make you want to keep it a secret. Don’t. Keeping it a secret will make it grow and take over anything you or your partner ever loved.

I work with and have a dear friend named Carla. She has been married forever and I love our chats. I respect both her and her husband for the choices and the way they have lived their marriage. I talked to Carla one day about this article telling her I needed insights on someone who has gone through it and survived. She smiled and said, “I have many.” Immediately she sent me her words and tips of wisdom. I am going to send them to you, because addictions happen, and when you are in the middle of one you often times cannot think and become a part of the addiction. Carla’s husband was dealing with an alcohol addiction, but I think her words of wisdom will help no matter what sort of addiction you are dealing with in your marriage.

1. Be supportive but don’t be an enabler.
Don’t make excuses for your loved one. That prevents them from making the tough choices they have to make.
2. Be honest with family and friends about the recovery.
We all have to take the stigma of addiction away. It shouldn’t be brushed under the table and it’s not contagious!
3. Talk openly with the kids about addiction and recovery.
When Carla’s husband was in rehab she took her kids who were 8 and 5 with her to visit their dad (he had already been there 2 weeks before he was allowed visitors). She spoke with them honestly, but in terms they could understand about their dad and where he was. Kids know when their parents have a problem, so frankly it was not a surprise to them.
4. Continue the conversation and openness about discussing addiction.
Now that her kids are 18 and 21, she still talks often with them about addiction. She and her husband warn them about their family history. She doesn’t talk about it as if it were something to be ashamed of. It is what it is.5. Make the home a safe place for them when they (your addict) return home. Carla had these words of wisdom for anyone in this situation.“I removed all the alcohol from my home, and I didn’t drink in front of my husband for about 2 years after his stay at rehab. I eventually asked him if it was okay for me to drink an occasional glass of wine in his presence. It was another five years before I kept wine and beer in the home, initially for parties.”
6. Keep telling your spouse how proud you are of the steps they are taking; First, for going to rehab; next for going to the meetings, earning the chips, having the strength to overcome addiction. It’s a big deal which must be acknowledged. Carla mentions this point as one of the most important: “Even after 13 years, my husband comments on his sobriety anniversary.”

Carla did not mention groups such as Alanon or Celebrate Recovery, but in my clinical practice both groups have helped millions on this journey.

The best thing you can do for yourself, your spouse and your children is to understand and know your family history of addictions. People use food, alcohol, drugs and porn when they grew up with addicted parents or mentors. Many times they don’t understand their addiction anymore than the spouse does. Once you’ve enabled it for so long that your children are witnessing it every day the damage is being done at a level that is difficult to undo. Find a counselor; get into a 12 step program, a rehab facility, or wherever your medical professionals advise. If you are the spouse of an addict, understand that your partner’s addiction has and will continue to affect you. You will have to make changes in order for them to make the necessary changes. An addiction, when handled with strict boundaries and love, doesn’t have to end your marriage. Carla added that one stunning piece of information she received during her husband’s treatment was that if she chose to leave her husband as a result of his addiction, she would lose control of what her kids witnessed while they were in his presence. She realized that she may not have a husband, but her kids would always have him as their father. That made her really fight for her marriage, and do whatever she could to help him in his recovery. Carla was fortunate in that he too was committed to beating his urge to drink. –Mary Jo Rapini

*Carla and her husband live outside Houston, are empty-nesters, enjoying their new-found freedom and still celebrating 27 years of marriage.

8 Responses

If the addict is willing to kick the addiction then yes, I think that they will need all of the support that you can provide them. If the addict is unwilling to stop using then I would have to give them an ultimatum and unfortunately, move on.

The most important thing to remember is that you cannot help someone who doesn’t want help. If your partner drinks heavily, you may feel that they have a drinking problem. But they may see it as a “nagging partner” problem. After all, they can get booze. Until your partner sees the harm that alcohol causes, *and* wants it to change – it won’t. Some people never change. So you have to evaluate what you can put up with. You may have pledged for better or worse and in sickness or health.. but you didn’t pledge to hell and back. Typically addictions come with collateral damage and you don’t have to put up with that. Abuse whether verbal, physical, or mental is out of bounds and grounds for you to leave. Just remember, until your partner sees it as a drinking (or dope) problem… it is not one for them.

Yep, so agree. But one can only hold out so long when the alcoholic remains in denial. I have seen marriages fail bc of it, as well as continue in turmoil because the spouse does not have the means to move on. And then there are the children of addiction – like myself….that enter the world with a vow to be and make things better yet have skewed views of normalcy, perfection and what true happiness looks like.

when one’s spouse, partner or significant other is an addict to booze, dope, other love object, or emotional turmoil that isn’t good for anyone, then one has a significant decision to make. A choosing to ditch the addict is on the board. About 80% of us are afraid of the dark. Wasting time while suffering the burden of another’s addiction or in the abovementioned writer’s view, bearing the burden through thick and thin, by enabling another to be dominated thru addiction by a greater love for booze, dope, sex or affection for another love object is just a choice. That choice isn’t special; one is free, and faced with sleeping in the dark at night, or living as an enabler. In my long life as a lawyer, we can’t change others. An addict is basically purdy selfish. An enabler of an addict is no special person. One who goes for freedome from an addict is a special person.

By all means do everything you can to stick by and support a spouse through addiction (barring being abused by said spouse) – you did swear “…in sickness and in health…” To not stand by that vow makes you, at best, a coward and a cad.

However, I would advise someone who is only dating a person with an addiction to drop him and find someone else without that problem. I would also advise the same for someone with a felony criminal record – in marrying him, you are also marrying his past and the handicaps it will pose the rest of his life.

Those are cold statements, but it WILL be a challenge to live with that person and his problem. If shopping, you may have to live with damaged goods, but you certainly don’t pick an item know to be significantly damaged when there are perfectly good items to choose from. Why would you exercise any less caution in how you spend your life and love than you do in how you spend your money?

At the very least, you need to REALISTICALLY evaluate what you are getting yourself into before you marry a person – and you need to be completely honest with the other person, so HE knows what HE is getting himself into by marrying you. EVERY person has some details and issues (no one is perfect), you each deserve to have the facts up front – not as an unpleasant surprise later on. A marriage based on a lie already has two strikes against its chances for success.